Paula: Coming up on NYC-Arts, a visit to the Met for a look at the exhibition New York Art Worlds, 1870-1890.

Sylvia: This is an exhibition that opened last December in our Luce Study Center gallery.

We're thinking about what was happening at the moment in 1870, who were the leading artists, who was defining taste at that time, the changes that occurred too in the transformation of the art world, you know, with all the new wealth after the Civil War.

The development really of an infrastructure for an art world proper.

I would say art worlds, there wasn't just one community.

There were many different communities that came together in the city in those years, in the 1870's and 1880's.

Paula: And a profile of pianist Evren Ozel, winner of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant Award.

Evren: When I perform is when I think I try the most to let myself be as free as possible.

When I go on stage, a lot of it is about feeling, listening to how the sound comes from the piano and fills the hall, fills the space.

Announcer: Funding for NYC-Arts is made possible by -- Thea Petschek Iervolino Foundation.

Jody and John Arnhold.

The Lewis Sonny Turner Fund for Dance.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Elise Jaffe and Jeffrey Brown.

Charles and Valerie Diker.

The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.

Elroy and Terry Krumholz Foundation.

The Nancy Sidewater Foundation.

And Ellen and James S. Marcus.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Additional funding provided by Members of Thirteen.

And by Swann Auction Galleries.

>> Swann Auction Galleries -- We have a different way of looking at auctions, offering vintage books and fine art since 1941.

Working to combine knowledge with accessibility, whether you are a lifelong collector or a first-time buyer, or looking to sell.

Information at SwannGalleries.com.

♪ ♪ Paula: Good evening, and welcome to NYC-Arts.

I'm Paula Zahn on location at the Alice Austen House on Staten Island.

John Haggerty Austen, a retired Quaker dry-goods merchant, bought this property in 1844 and it became the family home for more than 100 years.

While Staten Island had been a summer refuge for New Yorkers trying to escaping the heat and crowded conditions in Manhattan, the Austens put love and care into their new home they called Clear Comfort, which they came to enjoy all year round.

Renovations in the late 19th century transformed the home from a modest Dutch farmhouse to a Victorian Gothic Cottage.

Today, the house is named for Alice Austen -- John's granddaughter -- who photographed a changing world at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

She received a camera at the age of 11, skillfully developing her craft to become one of the first women photographers to work outside the confines of a traditional studio.

She began by photographing life on Staten Island in the 1880's, capturing the island's historic homes, maritime traffic, and farmland.

It was here that she began her life-long pursuit of documenting the people, places, and things around her.

Alice took her camera out into the world, returning to Clear Comfort where she had set up a darkroom in a small hallway closet on the second floor.

She worked all hours of the night until her prints met her own high standards.

Before 1900, there was no running water in the darkroom, so Alice would wash her prints at the backyard pump.

Of special interest to Alice were the gardens of Clear Comfort where she frequently posed her family, friends, and pets.

Her grandfather had been passionate about gardening and shared his love of nature with Alice.

The Austens installed walking paths and landscaped the property with unique trees, shrubs, and flowers, some of which were brought directly from Asia.

Many of her most notable photographs were taken on the front lawn overlooking the New York Narrows.

Much like the interior decoration of the home, the Austens also filled the garden with objects from their travels.

Several of Alice's photographs reveal large Asian vases and ornaments carefully placed among the trees and pathways on the grounds.

Clear Comfort is where Alice shared her life with her extended family and later with Gertrude Tate, her loving partner of more than 50 years.

Gertrude was a kindergarten and dance teacher in Brooklyn who worked to support herself, her mother, and her sister.

After the couple met at a retreat in the Catskills in 1899, Gertrude began to make frequent visits to Staten Island.

From the beginning, Alice and Gertrude became constant companions and traveled extensively throughout the world.

As Alice's life partner, Gertrude supported her endeavors as a photographer and helped to make a lively and happy home at Clear Comfort.

On our program tonight, a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the exhibition New York Art Worlds, 1870-1890.

This exhibit looks at work from these two decades, which saw the development of a modern and cosmopolitan art world, known as the American Aesthetic Movement.

The exhibition features more than 50 works -- most drawn from the Met's American Wing Galleries.

They include paintings, sculpture, illustrated books, and decorative objects -- such as painted tiles, stained glass, and textiles.

Notable artists represented here include Winslow Homer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Also on view is the work of several women and artists of color -- such as Cecilia Beaux, Edith Mitchill Prellwitz, and Charles Ethan Porter -- each of whom was able to achieve professional success during this unique period in the New York art world.

Sylvia: I'm Sylvia Yount.

I'm the Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum.

This is an exhibition that opened last December in our Luce Study Center gallery.

It's an exhibition that has a long gestation period.

It was originally intended to be shown in 2020, which was the year of the Met's 150th anniversary.

Something else happened in 2020 and the project was scuttled.

And the narrative then was really thinking about what was happening at the moment in 1870, who were the leading artists, who was defining taste at that time.

I wanted to think about the changes that occurred too in the transformation of the art world, you know, with all the new wealth after the Civil War.

The development really of an infrastructure for an art world proper.

I would say art worlds.

I mean, we're very deliberately using that plural, because there wasn't just one community.

There were many different communities that came together in the city in those years, in the 1870's and 1880's.

So many people are a part of this.

It's not just the artists, it's the critics, it's the collectors, it's the dealers.

And again, this is the moment when that is really developing as a new kind of infrastructure in the city of New York.

We are very lucky, very privileged to have a very deep and wide-ranging collection that speaks to this moment, produced at this time by a range of both canonic artists as well as lesser known artists.

People like Winslow Homer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Louis Comfort Tiffany, John La Farge.

The kind of positive of delaying the show for two years was that we had made a lot of new acquisitions actually, and particularly around the time of our anniversary year, we were able to bring in some wonderful gifts of works.

So adding a lot more texture to that, more canonic narrative.

So that was exciting to think about how we might expand the narrative and really kind of hone in on that role of the artists.

You know, the artists at the center of this movement.

So we're talking about institutions and of course talking about the Met and the role the Met played in helping the development of those artists' career.

But in those years it was a lot more interesting what was going on in the artist studios, you know, and then some of these new burgeoning galleries, not in the institutions, not in the established institutions.

There was this greater interest in kind of creativity and experimentation, collaboration across a lot of different kinds of art forms, but primarily intended for the domestic environment.

So the other name for this is the Household Art Movement.

And it was a time when you had painters and sculptors, people who were academically trained, experimenting in the decorative arts and design as well.

So a very rich period again, of innovation, experimentation, collaboration that was really happening right here in New York.

It's not just an exhibition of paintings and sculpture or even works on paper, but it has a real range of works from across the American Wing's collection, which is a collection of decorative arts and so-called fine arts and specifically works that are not on regular view because they're light sensitive.

So we have some wonderful textiles by the very important, innovative textile designer, Candace Wheeler, who is also an important business partner of Louis Comfort Tiffany in the first real interior decorating firm that was established in this country, so-called Associated Artists.

We also have stained glass works by John La Farge, a very important artist also working collaboratively in many cities in this country but based primarily in New York.

And then we have works that we often show in our permanent collection galleries upstairs on the second floor.

Iconic works by someone like Thomas Eakins, his painting of his wife and his setter dog, Harry.

That's normally seen in one context in our paintings galleries.

And one of the beauties of doing projects in this Luce Center Gallery where you can have a little bit more of a close looking at different types of objects is to think about a changing context.

You know, reframing the narrative a little bit, of bringing a different lens of interpretation to thinking about these very familiar works.

The 1870's was a very rich, the late 1870's, I would say, a very rich time in the New York art world.

It was really a kind of the development of a modern and cosmopolitan art world that we'd recognize today with creatives and taste makers.

At the center of that.

It was a time of challenging the establishment.

So artists coming back from training in Europe, primarily in Paris, and kind of invigorated and wanting to recreate that bohemian and creative collaborative atmosphere they enjoyed there.

So working in studios, setting up new kind of artist organizations where more people could participate with a broader range of artists, including women and artists of color.

We have some wonderful works in the installation by artists who really embody that.

Helena de Kay Gilder, Edith Mitchill Prellwitz, Charles Ethan Porter, the only known Black American artist to be engaged in the aesthetic movement in the Household Art Movement.

We have a really unusual painted tile by him in the exhibition.

He's experimenting, he's trying to find his own voice, and he's doing both decorative work and then very beautiful still lives.

And that's how he's best known today.

In the 1890's, he really flourishes as a still life painter.

And one of the things we wanted to do by having a work by him in this installation and as well as some of the other women, is to underline the fact that this was just the beginning for them.

And they continued to work as artists in both New York and other parts of the country.

And we have those later works in the collection as well.

So if this can be a way that visitors might discover someone new in this context, but then spends time in the Wing and finds the fuller rage of those artists, that would be really exciting to us.

Paula: For more information on cultural events in our area, please sign up for our free weekly email at NYC-ARTS.org/email.

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Next on our program, we'll celebrate the 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant Awards.

This year, the ceremony took place in March at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WQXR.

These individual grants of $25,000 give professional assistance and recognition to talented instrumentalists who have great potential for major careers in classical music.

In 2023, there were five recipients -- double bassist Nina Bernat, guitarist Bokyung Byun, flutist Emi Ferguson, pianist Evren Ozel, as well as the Isidore String Quartet.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Evren Ozel has established himself as a musician with probing, thoughtful interpretations.

He performs frequently all over the country as an up-and-coming soloist and chamber musician.

Ozel has performed with major orchestras including the Boston Pops, The Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, and many more.

Currently, Ozel is in the Master of Music program at New England Conservatory.

Evren: I started to play when I was three years old, and very quickly piano became my absolute favorite thing to do just all the time.

I, I loved going to piano lessons.

It was always something that really motivated me.

I had friends at school at the time that would do anything to get out of taking piano lessons.

And for me it was, oh boy, I better behave otherwise, no more piano lessons, and I love those.

My biggest influences over the years, number one, I'd have to say my teacher, Wha Kyung Byun, who I have studied with for almost a decade now.

She is just always so, so detailed and in my mind, she hears absolutely everything.

There is nothing that her ears can't pick up.

Another huge inspiration for me has been my stepfather.

That's from a really, really young age.

I met him when I was five years old.

He's a Polish pianist himself.

He's the artistic director of the Chopin Society of Minnesota.

And so when my mom and I met him, we started attending Chopin Society concerts.

So that was five live piano recitals every season.

And, you know, that had a tremendous impact on me.

The love of music that he brought really into our house was always really inspiring for me.

The biggest difference between when I practice and when I perform is that when I perform, I have those hours of practice behind me, those days, those years of practice behind me, really.

And so when I perform, I think is when I try the most to let myself be free, to let myself be as free as possible.

When I go on stage, a lot of it is about feeling, listening to how the sound comes from the piano and fills the hall, fills the space.

♪ The late work by Franz Liszt, Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este or The Fountains at the Villa d'Este.

It's an incredibly meaningful and deep piece.

Growing up, didn't really play much Liszt, if any Liszt at all.

And I only in the past four or five years really started to appreciate his music.

This piece in particular is one of his, one of his later works.

It's from the third set of the years of pilgrimage, which is the last set.

And he wrote it much later than the first two.

It's Liszt, not necessarily at his, you know, as his virtuostic-self, but it's more as his deep thinking and probing self.

♪ You think about the literal translation of Les jeux d'eau being "water games."

You can really sort of hear the little splashes in the fountain and sort of the streams of water flowing out.

♪ Being a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant is extremely meaningful to me.

It will help me in many, many ways, not the least of which is my plans to hopefully make a recording.

It's a recording of the complete Chopin Mazurkas.

Growing up with a Polish pianist as a stepfather, Chopin's Mazurkas were always very, very meaningful to me.

And I feel that I have a very special relationship with them as one of Chopin's oeuvre.

♪ [Applause] Paula: Next week on NYC-Arts, a profile of artist Shahzia Sikander, whose work brings the arts of the South Asian diaspora to the United States.

Shahzia: Art inspires, survives.

For me, art is very much about knowledge, construction, how I process things that are around me, whether it's history, politics, daily living.

All of it enters into the space of art.

Paula: A look at the exhibition Africa & Byzantium now on view at the Met, which brings together the art, religion, literature, history, and archeology of this region in ancient times.

Objects in the exhibition include a range of media, from monumental frescoes, mosaics, panel paintings, ceramics, and illuminated manuscripts.

And a visit to the studio of Artist Faith Ringgold.

Faith: These are people who I associate with my life growing up in Harlem.

The musicians, the artists, the politicians, all of these truly great people.

Paula: I hope you've enjoyed our program tonight.

I'm Paula Zahn on location at the Alice Austen House on Staten Island.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time.

To enjoy more of your favorite segments on NYC-Arts, visit our website at NYC-Arts.org.

Dee Dee: A woman came to see me perform and said, how would you like to play Billie Holiday?

Jodi: I think one of the essential things that we learned is that Matisse used pens to compose his work.

♪ Announcer: Funding for NYC-Arts is made possible by -- Thea Petschek Iervolino Foundation.

Jody and John Arnhold.

The Lewis Sonny Turner Fund for Dance.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Elise Jaffe and Jeffrey Brown.

Charles and Valerie Diker.

The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.

Elroy and Terry Krumholz Foundation.

The Nancy Sidewater Foundation.

And Ellen and James S. Marcus.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Additional funding provided by Members of Thirteen.

And by Swann Auction Galleries.

>> Swann Auction Galleries -- We have a different way of looking at auctions, offering vintage books and fine art since 1941.

Working to combine knowledge with accessibility, whether you are a lifelong collector or a first-time buyer, or looking to sell.

Information at SwannGalleries.com.